


Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

by inexplicifics



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25177354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexplicifics/pseuds/inexplicifics
Summary: When there aren't any monsters to kill, sometimes Geralt has to sell services other than his swords.Jaskier's father expects him to behave as befits the Pankratz heir.Both Geralt and Jaskier want the same thing: to get the hell out of Kerack.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 60
Kudos: 1031





	Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth

The thing that always surprises Geralt is how much crueller humans are than monsters.

Monsters try to kill him regularly, but that’s their nature. They kill for food, or to protect their territory, or to defend themselves from enemies - like, for instance, witchers. He understands that. Monsters may hurt him, but he doesn’t take it personally. Monster hunts people, witcher hunts monster, one of them dies, the other one gets some interesting scars, that’s the way life goes.

Humans, though. Humans hurt each other for all sorts of reasons that aren’t food or territory or defense. They hurt each other just because they _can_ , a lot of the time, and enjoy doing so. But most of them _do_ try to avoid doing permanent harm to other humans, at least other humans who matter in whatever culture they happen to be in.

Witchers, however - if a witcher is so foolish as to make himself vulnerable to humans - well, witchers are fair game. Humans feel quite free to do whatever the fuck they like to a witcher, should they have the opportunity.

And many of them will pay well for the opportunity.

Geralt lies quietly on the floor as the human leaves; the bag of coins clinks as the man drops it on the table beside the door. In a bit, Geralt will get up and take the coins. In a bit. When he’s stopped bleeding.

This particular human has left a really remarkable number of cuts on Geralt’s skin. The whole room reeks of blood. Geralt would be mildly impressed by the artistry, if it weren’t on his body. He _thinks_ most of the cuts are shallow enough that they won’t scar. And even if they do, what’s a few more scars on his already-battered hide?

And pain is only pain; Geralt measures pain against the Trials, and nothing else in his long and unpleasant life has even come close.

The salt water was a bit rude, though. Geralt would have genuinely preferred to not have salt water dumped on his bleeding body.

There’s a vial of Kiss waiting for him in his pack, and one of Swallow. He just needs to get up and _get_ them. Which means moving. Fuck, the beating _before_ the man took out his dagger was...remarkably effective. Nothing’s _broken_ \- well, no, several of his ribs are a bit cracked, but those will heal - but everything is bruised. Very, very bruised.

Oh, and his ass hurts. That’s...not his favorite part of this experience. Never is. If nothing else, blood really doesn’t make good lubrication.

He’d rather fight a selkiemore, all things considered.

Unfortunately, Kerack doesn’t appear to have any convenient selkiemores. Or any other monsters, for that matter.

He sighs and braces a hand against the ground, and pushes himself up to kneel on the bloody wooden floor. His pack is just barely within reach; he fumbles out his potions and knocks both Kiss and Swallow back, then settles into an uncomfortable meditation as the potions take effect. Some hours later, he’s stopped bleeding; most of the cuts have scabbed over, his ribs are at least half-healed, and he feels a _little_ less like he’s just been beaten to a pulp and then cut to ribbons besides.

The bag of coin is just as heavy as it ought to be, but when Geralt pours it out on the bed, only half of it _is_ coin. The other half is...small stones.

Geralt closes his eyes and sighs. _Humans_.

This isn’t enough to get him out of Kerack - it’s barely enough to let him restock his potions, get his armor and weapons mended, and pay for meals and Roach’s stabling while he’s waiting for the blacksmith and the armorer to do their work. And there are still no monsters in Kerack.

He’ll take the rest of the night to recover, and before he goes out to drop off his weapons and armor tomorrow, he’ll tell the innkeeper to let anyone who is interested know that he’s...available again, for another night.

Cash upfront.

*

Jaskier steps into his father’s study, trying hard not to flinch _preemptively_. That’ll just make his father angrier, and he doesn’t _think_ he’s done anything to piss his father off recently, so there’s a tiny possibility that his father just wants to lecture him on the duties of the Pankratz heir or something like that.

“Julian,” his father says, turning from the window to give Jaskier a thin, humorless smile. “Punctual for once, I see.”

“Yes, sir,” Jaskier says warily.

His father moves to stand behind his desk, clasping his hands behind his back, and nods. “Punctuality is a mark of true nobility. I am pleased to see you have at last begun to understand the true weight of our heritage and obligations.” Jaskier doesn’t sigh. Yep, another lecture on the duties of a Pankratz. Whee. He tunes his father out, thinking instead on the song he’s been trying to write in his spare time, until his father’s tone changes and he focuses abruptly to hear, “...to demonstrate your mastery, the _dominance_ which is the birthright of any Pankratz son. He will be waiting in your chambers tonight.”

“...Yes, sir,” Jaskier says, frantically trying to remember what the sentence _before_ that horrifying set of phrases was. It _sounds_ like his father has bought him a _male prostitute_ , which, well, the time his father bought him a _female_ prostitute for the night was frankly mortifying enough, even if she was good enough to take Jaskier at his word and just spend the night hugging him instead of trying to instigate anything more licentious. Jaskier _has_ had sex, with both men and women, but that was at Oxenfurt, with other students who genuinely _wanted_ to share his bed, not with some poor working girl who frankly just looked _tired_. “I will comport myself as befits a true Pankratz,” Jaskier adds hastily, since his father is starting to look a little displeased. The stormclouds pass; his father smirks a little and waves a dismissal, and Jaskier retreats as fast as he dares.

He’s too nervous to eat much at supper, and _does_ wonder if he can head to the library afterwards and pretend he forgot about the whole thing, but putting it off won’t help anything; he pushes back from the table at last, having played with his food enough to make it _look_ like he ate his fill, bows his farewells to his father and mother, and heads up to his room with his head held high and dragging steps.

There is, indeed, a man waiting in his room, kneeling in the middle of the floor, head bowed. He’s shirtless and barefoot, and his skin is seamed with scars - more scars than Jaskier would have thought _anyone_ could have and still live. His long, silver-white hair has fallen over his face, concealing it from view. He doesn’t look up as Jaskier steps into the room and closes the door.

“Um,” Jaskier says after a long, silent moment, all his usual eloquence deserting him entirely. “Good evening?”

The man looks up at last, and his eyes catch the firelight, flaring golden as the sun. Jaskier’s jaw drops, and he thumps back against the door, staring in shock and wonder.

“You’re a _witcher_ ,” he blurts.

“Yes,” the witcher agrees. His voice is deep and a little raspy and frankly _unfairly_ lovely. _All_ of him is frankly unfairly lovely. Jaskier doesn’t precisely have a preferred type when it comes to lovers - he is a firm believer that almost _everyone_ is beautiful, when you look at it properly, and he has swooned over passers-by and acquaintances and light-o-loves of all descriptions - but he has to admit that _this_ man, this _witcher_ , with his pale skin and moonsilver hair and golden eyes, broad and brawny and scarred from hundreds of battles, oddly vulnerable as he kneels barefoot on the stone floor - _this_ man is something else again. He’s fucking _ballad-worthy_ , is what he is. Beautiful in a way surpassing any merely human loveliness.

Why is a _witcher_ kneeling shirtless in Jaskier’s chambers?

His father can’t seriously expect him to - to “demonstrate mastery” over a _witcher_?

His father is _just_ the sort of pompous asshole to expect him to demonstrate mastery over a witcher.

Why would a witcher _cooperate_?

“I don’t understand,” Jaskier says, his voice a little higher and thinner than he means it to be.

The witcher’s lips twist in a wry, unhappy little smile. “I am at your service for the night,” he says calmly.

“To do _what_?” Jaskier squeaks.

“Anything you want,” the witcher says. “Short of killing me.” The wry little smile gets bitterer. “Your father didn’t pay enough for that.”

Jaskier makes a wordless noise of baffled horror. “He - I - he - _you_ -”

The witcher watches him, one eyebrow rising just slightly, as if Jaskier is a dog performing some amusing trick and not doing it very well. Jaskier shakes himself and tries to put his thoughts in _some_ sort of coherent order. “My father,” he begins at last, “paid you to let me - to let me fuck you?”

“If that’s what you want,” the witcher says.

“What...else...would I want?” Jaskier asks warily.

The witcher shrugs a little, and Jaskier eyes the rolling muscles as his shoulders move and thinks that he could write a whole song just about _that_. Fuck, Jaskier’s not a small man, nor weak, whatever his father thinks, but this witcher could break him with one hand. “Witchers heal fast,” he says, which isn’t really an answer to Jaskier’s question except for how, horrifyingly, it _is_.

“My father paid you to let me _hurt_ you?” he squeaks, voice going up an octave again. Gods dammit, he usually has better vocal control than this. He’s a trained _bard_ , for fuck’s sake. On the other hand, he’s never been in quite this awkward a situation, not even that one time his one night stand’s _actual_ lover came home unexpectedly at midnight and Jaskier had to climb out a window and run home through the streets of Oxenfurt in a lady’s skirt and one boot.

“Yes,” the witcher says, now giving him an almost baffled look, like he’s not sure why Jaskier’s reacting so badly.

“And you - did he threaten you? Or - or -” Jaskier genuinely can’t imagine _why_ a witcher would take such a deal, even for quite a lot of money.

The witcher sighs. “There aren’t any monsters in Kerack,” he says, as though explaining the facts of life to a very small child. “I need money to _leave_ Kerack.” That wry little smile is back. “No one pays a witcher to run errands.”

Jaskier slides down the door to sit on the floor, staring at the witcher in horror. “Demonstrate mastery,” he says faintly. “Oh, Melitele _wept_.”

The witcher watches him silently, expression utterly calm and unreadable. Jaskier thumps his head back against the door and closes his eyes. His father expects him to hurt this witcher - hurt him quite badly, Jaskier would guess, since he hired a _witcher_ and not a run-of-the-mill male prostitute. In order to “demonstrate mastery” and prove he’s worthy of being the Pankratz heir. Which - Jaskier doesn’t _want_ to be the next Count de Lettenhove; his cousin Ferrant would honestly be much better at it and also _wants_ the job, while Jaskier wants to be a traveling bard. Which is, naturally, not the sort of profession a future count is allowed to have. And he _certainly_ doesn’t want to be the sort of man who would - who would beat a man bloody just to prove he _can_. Even if the other man _is_ a witcher, and would heal. Jaskier’s been in the occasional fistfight, and he stabbed a man once - to be perfectly fair, the man was attempting to mug him at the time - but he doesn’t actually like causing pain if he can help it. Certainly not to someone who has done nothing to _deserve_ it, which as far as he knows the witcher _hasn’t_. Maybe if it was Valdo fucking Marx kneeling here, Jaskier might be tempted to do something unpleasant to him, but -

 _Wait_ a moment.

The witcher needs to get out of Kerack.

Jaskier wants to get out of Kerack.

“Did you say my father has _already_ paid you?” Jaskier asks, without opening his eyes.

“Yes,” the witcher says, sounding rather wary.

“Alright,” Jaskier says, thinking as fast as he ever has in his life. “I don’t have a lot of coin, but I _do_ have a fair bit of jewelry, and it’s all good quality. Every bit of it is yours if you leave Kerack _tonight_ \- and take me with you.”

*

This is not exactly how Geralt expected his night to go.

For one thing, it hasn’t involved any pain yet, although Geralt is reserving judgment on whether that’s a good thing or not. Pain, after all, he knows how to deal with. This...whatever this is, however, is new, and new things are often _problems_.

He was _expecting_ the younger Pankratz - Julian, he thinks the Count de Lettenhove had called him - to be his father again in miniature: a vicious little creature who needed a target to take his nastiness out on that wouldn’t die of it. Why else hire a witcher to be a young man’s toy for the evening? But the lad who is currently slumped against the door, smelling of something bitter that isn’t quite fear, with a strange sweet undernote of hope that’s only just started to appear, and an oddly intermittent richness of lust, has so far made absolutely no effort to do Geralt injury, and indeed seemed genuinely horrified by the thought.

Oh, and he apparently wants to leave Kerack almost as badly as Geralt does.

“ _Why_?” Geralt asks, baffled.

Julian opens startlingly blue eyes and meets Geralt’s gaze evenly. “Because I want to leave,” he says, and then, seeming to understand that that’s not anywhere near enough, adds, “Look, you’ve met my father. Would _you_ want to be his son?”

Geralt has to admit that’s fair. The Count de Lettenhove _is_ a singularly unpleasant individual. Were Geralt’s unknown, presumably long-dead father to have been such a man, Geralt would probably have been grateful to be given to the witchers, at least for a little while. But being the Count de Lettenhove’s son and heir does mean that Julian is in line to be the _next_ Count de Lettenhove, and Geralt knows that humans cling to power quite viciously. Leaving with Geralt might jeopardize Julian’s chances of inheriting, which most noble sons, Geralt knows from experience, do not like to do.

“He might disown you,” he says, because the lad has _clearly_ not thought this through.

“Good!” Julian says, startling Geralt again. “Cousin Ferrant can _have_ the fucking title, and all the shit that goes with it. I don’t want it.”

His heartbeat doesn’t waver; his scent doesn’t sour. He’s telling the absolute truth, insofar as Geralt can tell, and Geralt has gotten very good at detecting lies over the years.

“Please?” Julian says softly.

It’s a terrible idea. If he does this, Geralt won’t be able to come back to Kerack until well after the current Count de Lettenhove is dead and buried. There’s no way this boy will be suited to the rigors of travel - he’ll be miserable immediately, probably begging Geralt to bring him back before the first day is out. He’ll slow Geralt down: Roach can’t carry two for very long.

On the other hand, the Count de Lettenhove _did_ hire Geralt to do whatever his son wanted for the night. If what Julian wants is to get as far from Lettenhove as possible, who is Geralt to argue? And Geralt has enough money to get the fuck out of Kerack, now: the Count de Lettenhove _did_ pay upfront, in good solid gold and silver. If Julian’s jewelry is decent quality, it’ll cover the extra costs of traveling with _two_ people.

And Geralt has to admit he has some reluctant fellow-feeling for someone else who just wants to get the fuck out of Kerack.

“The jewelry,” he says gruffly. “And two bags. No more.” Roach can’t carry more than that, not with Geralt’s baggage too.

The lad _lights up_ , scent flooding with hope and eager joy, and leaps to his feet. “Two bags,” he says, and then, “And a lute? Or would the lute count as a bag? It’s very light - half a bag?” He’s bounding around the room even as he speaks, pulling a box off the dresser and emptying it onto the bed in a glittering spill of gold and silver and semiprecious gems, plucking clothing out of a dresser and heaping it beside the jewelry. Geralt rises slowly to his feet and goes over to the chair where he’s left his tunic and stockings and boots, dressing without really thinking about it as he watches Julian move hurriedly around the rooms. The clothing is joined by the promised lute, a rather battered-looking thing - an odd contrast to the clothing, actually, which seems to be mostly brightly-colored silks. Utterly impractical for the road, but a viscount presumably doesn’t have a lot of good sturdy traveling clothing. Geralt ventures over to the bed and begins sorting through the jewelry, making mental estimations of how much it’s worth. The answer is ‘quite a lot,’ actually - not a large fortune, but not clipped coppers either.

He plucks a bag from a nearby table and pours the jewelry into it, and then very carefully picks up the lute. He has no idea how fragile it might be - he’s never really had much interest in instruments. It’s not terribly heavy. “Two bags,” he decides. “And the lute.” He sets it down again just as carefully. The strings make a tiny thrumming noise, too faint for human ears to catch.

“Wonderful!” Julian carols, and stuffs his clothing into a pair of sturdy saddlebags far more quickly than Geralt expected, tucks the lute into a case with all the care of a man handling an infant princess, slings the case over his shoulder and picks up the saddlebags and grins at Geralt. “I’m ready. The kitchen door isn’t ever locked, and by now the servants have gone to bed; shall we go?”

No hesitation at following a witcher into the unknown. No desire to do harm, even when the opportunity is given him upon a silver platter. No greedy grasping for a title and the power that comes with it.

Geralt doesn’t think he’s ever met a human quite like this one before, and he’s still not quite certain this is better than the way he expected his night to go. New things are dangerous, always. But he tucks the little bag of jewelry into his belt and nods all the same, because he’s already made his choice; now all that’s left is to see it through.

“Wait!” Julian says suddenly. “I don’t even know your _name_ , where are my manners?”

Something about that strikes Geralt as funny; he snorts a laugh, and holds out a hand. “Geralt of Rivia.”

“Call me Jaskier,” the lad says, shaking his hand with a broad grin. Buttercup. It sort of suits him, Geralt thinks. “Alright. Let’s get the hell out of Kerack.”

“Let’s go,” Geralt agrees, and follows Jaskier out of the room, and into their destiny.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a pair of kinkmeme prompts.


End file.
